JohnJo's blog

The folks over at Aga Twyford have sent through details of their latest renovated Aga offering. As of the 28th November they are able to offer high grade 13 amp electric Agas in 2 oven, 3 oven and 4 oven sizes. All Agas are CE marked and are Aga approved.

Each one comes with a 5 year guarantee and I’m informed that the service interval is once every 5 years. Certainly a million miles away from the interval period we experienced with our ancient oil converted Aga.

The guarantee covers one year parts and labour and 4 years parts only.

Prices are as follows and include VAT at 15%, a pre installation site visit and fitting and commissioning at a ready site.

The blogger known as "Wife in the North" has woken to find that her Aga has stopped working. She puts a brave face on it even though she does say that "in the country this is worse than your husband leaving you for his horse." Read her solution to not being able to make tea here. Nice.

The delectable Laura James is the author behind Aga's new expedition into the world of blogging. Her blog, Girl by the Aga, makes an interesting addition to Aga's growing online offering.

Laura is well embedded in the Aga emporium so it's not surprising that she gets the inside track when it comes to announcing new initiatives such as this one which brings us the spanking new Aga Christmas web site:

"Whether you're looking for festive food ideas, fabulous gifts or tips and advice to get you through the holiday season, you'll find it here. Our resident Cookery Doctor is on hand to help with your culinary conundrums, there's a useful countdown checklist, a host of Christmas recipes and much more. We've put everything you need in one place to ensure a hassle free holiday. Quite frankly, we have Christmas all wrapped up…"

The cookery doctor mention above is none other than Richard Maggs, a familiar name to us over here at Aga Central.

We like Agas, we've got a soft spot for girls, what's not to like? Put the kettle on, pull up a comfy chair and have a read of Girl by the Aga.

This is intriguing. I've just come across the agawanted.com web site which, on the front page, shows a western style wanted poster pinned to a tree. The poster has an image of an Aga cooker on it and some text promising a reward. What can it all mean?

Well, it seams that Aga trying to find the whereabouts of all the Agas in the UK. Now that's an undertaking and a half. If you want to take part just visit the agawanted.com site and fill in the claim form linked to at the bottom of the page.

I don't know when this video was made but it must have been just after the Aga cooker was introduced to the USA. In it, Martha Stewart demonstrates cooking a meal for a whole bunch of people but that for me was not the interesting bit. If you wind in and watch from about 1:32 in to about 4:00 you get treated to what looks like an old information video about the Aga, where it's made and how it works. Spiffing English accent and all.

Here's an interesting little saga by Mrs Nesbitt over at her Rambles blog. She starts of with some interesting Aga history and then get's to her own Aga which was bought second hand for £500, cracks and all.

"A farmer over in Catterick had a second hand aga business and so we purchased ours for £500. There were some faults with it, a major one being a crack in the main barrell, but Jon fixed this.

When we bought the Aga it did not come ready assembled. The pile of components, pipes and doors was like a complicated 3D jigsaw to me, but fortunately, Jon with his precision engineering background, and with the aid of a basic diagram assembled the Aga. The preparations were quite specific as it could not go on any old surface. It had to be housed on a concrete plinth and on a surface which would not burn, should hot coal fall onto it. Again, this was something Jon did, but we couldn't do anything yet as the whole assembly and plumbing had to be signed off by a corgi-registered plumber. Once this was done the Aga boiler and cooker were lit and it was in action!"

Here's an interesting little factoid from the folks over at AgaRanges.com. "In the year 2000, the BBC published a retrospective of the 20th Century highlighting what it considered to be the top three design icons:

...first was the Coca-Cola® contour bottle, second was the VW™ Bug and third was the Aga cooker."